Lucknow, Sep 25: The Uttar Pradesh Cabinet on Tuesday approved the proposal to build a six-lane expressway between Agra and Lucknow on the public-private partnership (PPP) model.

This green field expressway shall be based on a minimum distance formula and provide a smooth link from Greater Noida to Lucknow. The 270-km six-lane (extendable to eight lanes) expressway will stretch from Taj city's Ring Road, close to Yamuna expressway, to Lucknow's Inner Ring Road.

The current journey time from Greater Noida to Lucknow via Agra, covering about 530 km, is around 9 hours. Once the Agra-Lucknow expressway has been completed, the journey time would drastically be reduced to 5 hours. Likewise the 6 hour journey between Agra and Lucknow of 365 km will only take around 3.30 hours after the completion of the expressway.

The highway will pass through Fatehabad, Shikohabad, Saifai, National Highway (NH) 92 near Etawah, NH-91 near Kannauj, and NH-25A near Malihabad.

With the cabinet's nod, work can now start on the ambitious project, said officials.

At a Cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, it was also decided to give a go ahead to the construction of a sports college in Saifai, the constituency of Mr. Yadav.

The Cabinet also approved the MoU between the UP State Electricity Production Nigam and the Nevli Lignite Corporation for the setting up of a 2,000 MW thermal power project at Ghatampur, on the outskirts of Kanpur.

The Cabinet also took a significant decision to amend the Molasses policy and allow sugar mills to sell molasses, a by-product of sugar production, in the open market.

The Cabinet also declared a discount of 10 percent, on all types of Khadi clothes on Gandhi Jayanti (Oct 2), decided to directly transfer scholarships given to scheduled caste/scheduled tribe (SC/ST) students after passing Class 10, and to provide biometric cards for the beneficiaries of the public distribution system (PDS), a government spokesman said.